Is EA Black Box's long awaited update for the Need for Speed franchise a pulse-pumping, full-featured thrill ride across the US of A, or a total cross-country slog? Find out in Ten Ton Hammer's latest review!

Anyone whose had the pleasure (or displeasure, depending on the vehicle and/or reason) of a road trip across the lower 48 knows the basic premise of Need for Speed: The Run. Granted, you probably weren't being chased by trigger-happy Mafia in black sedans and helicopters in pursuit of a blood debt-forgiving $2.5 million purse, but you likely wanted to reach your destination as quickly as possible.

Cautions

Apart from taking bank shots off of minivans to corner faster, the only potentially offensive aspect of The Run is a few jarring bolts of voice-acted obscenity come out of the blue around Las Vegas, never to resurface before or after. I'm guessing Jack Rourke isn't the first guy to discover their pottymouth in Sin City, though.

Gameplay - 75 / 100

At its heart, Need for Speed: The Run is a stage racer, and would be perfectly at home in an arcade cabinet. The sledgehammer plot wouldn't suffice for even a Fast and Furious sequel (despite the Hollywood-this, cinematic-that billing in the options menu), but if you're playing an arcade racer for story, you're in the wrong genre.

Players don't have to race all of the 3,000ish miles across the United States, of course. Thankfully, you're left with an estimated 270 miles (average speed multiplied by hours to complete) of interesting pan-American vignettes, less than a tenth of the actual route. Each of the 10 stages is comprised of mini-stages that follow one of three formats: make up time (flat out racing against the clock), battles (beat 1-3 successive rivals through checkpoints), and move up positions (beat around 7 opponents to the finish).

"Battle down the mountain" is an example of one of Need for Speed: The Run's three core gameplay formats.

Every so often The Run will break up the formula, sometimes in innovative ways (the most memorable was a harrowing run down a closed Colorado road in the process of being dynamited to trigger avalanches) and sometimes in forgettable ones. In Las Vegas and Chicago, The Run suffers from the same paralytically interactive cutscenes that appeared in Battlefield 3, where an instant keypress is required or you'll have to loop through the sequence. If you're not absolutely attuned to your controller, it's a frustrating, distracting, and ultimately attempt at injecting gameplay where it's not needed.

Before and after shots of a race along Colorado's treacherously snow-covered Million-Dollar Highway.

All that said, the pacing of The Run is dead-on. The United States is much like a supermodel's midsection; curvy and urbane at the extremes and flat in the middle. Accordingly, EA Black Box gives you slower, easier-handling cars from San Francisco through Yosemite State Park and the Rockies, graduating you to stiffer, faster cars through the relatively flat and straight Great Plains, and capping off the experience with supercars that offer top speeds in excess of 220 MPH, 0-60 acceleration of around 2.8 seconds, and excellent handling.

As tough as the game is to play with steering wheel and pedals (Logitech G27 users and other similarly kitted-out racers should note that the game does NOT support a shifter), it's impossible to play with the keyboard. The X360 controller (or one of the myriad knockoffs) is the only way to play Need for Speed: The Run. Grab a controller and you'll be rewarded with just the kind of grit this type of game should offer. More often than not, I'd win a race with milliseconds to spare, and white-knuckle excitement wasn't just a cliche.

The Run should be a celebration of the scenery (blur that it is) as well as the cars you get to drive. Switching and tuning the cars should be part of the experience. Sorrowfully, you have to duck into a gas station mid-race to change cars, and that usually means losing several positions. Worse, if you lose the race, you'll find yourself back in your old car.

Graphics - 87 / 100

Need for Speed: The Run is lovingly handcrafted right down to the individualized road signs, purple mountain's majesty and golden waves of... corn (into which I regularly went careening). The magic of a continent-wide romp should be one of the big reasons to play a game like Need for Speed: The Run, and it is. Cities, countryside, industrial areas, snowy mountain roads - if you cast a glimpse to try and take it all in at 130 MPH, you'll be impressed with the graphics of this game.

At worst, Need for Speed: The Run shows the versatility of the Frostbite 2 engine, the same engine used (at marginally lower speeds) in Battlefield 3. While the engine regularly delivered fluid visual knockouts at acceptable framerates, the game entered what I started calling "jelly time" when traffic conditions worsened, mafia sedans and helicopters hammered away with their machine guns and, in general, way too much was happening on the screen. In jelly time, the game grew selective about which control movements it chose to interpret, getting a little predictive (more than occasionally to my doom).

Glare from high intensity lights seems to plague all titles based on the Frostbite 2 engine.

Also detracting were Frostbite 2's treatment of headlights and sunlight. Retina-frying lighting and flicker was somewhat more tame than in BF3, but high-intensity lights are still bright and blurry enough to mess with your depth perception. When threading your way through the New York subway system, for example, it's helpful to know just how far away that oncoming train is, especially when travelling at 169 MPH.

Sound - 95 / 100

Need for Speed: The Run features a pulse-pumping Brian Tyler soundtrack supplemented by a janglin licensed assortment ranging from classic rock to folk to indie to alternative that would be at home on any longhaulers' track list. Sampled engine noise for each car, tire squeals, gear changes, and the whirr of the tires on the game's varied palette of terrain is beyond reproach. That said, the game's directional sound isn't an adequate replacement for a rear view mirror, but it's better than constantly tweaking the "look back" button.

Multiplayer - 45 / 100

From Pole Position to Mario Kart, it's pretty unthinkable that a aspiring racer would launch without a solid multiplayer mode, yet squirrely, bug-ridden, half-baked multiplayer racing is the single biggest travesty of Need for Speed: The Run.

In addition to crippling control lockups that only seem to happen in multiplayer, you'll hear everything from any open mic used by any of your opponents. This, of course, leads to hilarity, occasional embarrassment, and general annoyance unless you kill the audio entirely. Since audio cues are the only way you'll know an opponent is on your tail without peeking behind you (the game doesn't offer a rear view mirror in any view), this alone can be crippling. Worse, the game offers next to no volume or mic controls in-game - strong evidence of a sadly compromised PC port. Worst of all, these basic gotchas should have been addressed in early testing, but still haven't been fixed weeks after launch.

The Run's multiplayer woes are put in high relief by what actually works. In the single player game, the Speed Wall is a fun way to compare your Run times by stage and overall with your friends who use EA's Origin platform. Fellow editor Ben de la Durantaye finished our Run after hours of racing with an overall time of - astoundingly - less than 3 seconds apart. In multiplayer, the game offers a barrage of profile icons for just about any threshold you can think of plus a comprehensive, level-driven system which rewards levels, achievements, and medals with new (and markedly better) cars. Had EA Black Box bothered to connect the dots on the PC version of the game, we'd probably have a solid come-uppance for sometime fans of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.

Value - 55 / 100

Need for Speed: The Run is less of a IP-flagship than a novelty, franchise breakaway sort of title. In the wake of full-fledged car and driver series like Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport, and Test Drive Unlimited, the inflated expectations around The Run make it seem like more of a letdown than it really is.

Only at four times during the cross-continent race can players choose their ride without stopping at a gas station mid-race and potentially losing positions.

Unfortunately, the $49.99 price point does nothing to help that uneasy feeling. With roughly two hours spent racing (and two or three more spent in loading screens and race resets), it's hard for me to see The Run as more than a $US 39.99 game, even with a shiny new engine and three years of development time.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Idealized yet believable graphics make the flyover states eminently driveable.

Intensity of races and pacing of cars close to perfection.

Engaging premise means flaws could easily be corrected in the inevitable sequel.

Cons:

Multiplayer voicechat and controls flawed beyond playability.

Very few options for tuning cars, and no opportunities to swap vehicles on-the-fly without sabotaging your race.

Lack of twists and surprises ultimately delivers a good racer, but a flat experience.

Conclusion

Need for Speed: The Run is a solid arcade racer. Only a botched multiplayer experience, some tuning options, less interactivity in the cutscenes, more ease of switching cars, and a little narrative depth - some side missions to get better cars or to help someone Jack Rourke actually cares about (assuming such a person exists) - keeps The Run from elevating the Need for Speed franchise to its PS2-era glory.

Overall 81/100 - Good

About The Author

Jeff's interest in online games stretches back to organizing neighborhood Unreal tournaments as a teenager, but when a college roommate introduced him to EverQuest, an interest became an obsession. Jeff joined the Ten Ton Hammer team in 2004 covering EverQuest II, and he's had his hands on just about every PC online and multiplayer game since.